German-American Discourse on Politics and Culture

April 13, 2012

Günter Grass and Pent-Up Anti-Semitism

First, Günter Grass is not anti-Semitic. He published a bad poem but it is reprehensible that pundits such as Henryk Broder and Marcel Reich-Ranicki bludgeon Grass with the anti-Semitism cudgel. Second, it is wrong that Israel deny Günter Grass entry into the country, just as it was wrong for the US to deny entry to Oxford lecturer Tariq Ramadan. Democracies do not muffle voices of dissent or criticism.

That said, the poem, and the reaction to the poem by the established media, has opened a Pandora's Box of populist anti-Semitism. The avalanche of blog posts and comments aren't just critical observations or commentary of Israel's settlements in the West Bank or civil rights of Palestinians, but reflect a hatred of the Jewish state which points to something much more disturbing. This is all very reminiscent of the reception to Thilo Sarrazin's racist book Deutschland schafft sich ab (2010), which was condemned by the establishment but was enthusiastically embraced by the masses.

Mr. Grass’s critics hail mostly from the cultural and political elite, while his support appears to be far more broadly based — even if Mr. Grass is not himself seen as the best spokesman for that view, given his own Nazi past

Sharp criticism of Israel, particularly from the left, has long been a tradition among European intellectuals, and Mr. Grass’s poem caused little stir on the Continent outside of Germany. But political and scholarly elites here have more often resisted that trend, tending to see basic support for Israel as a German responsibility, if not a necessity, after the Holocaust.

But the public response to the furor over Mr. Grass’s poem suggests that that attitude is breaking down as World War II recedes into history. “In the populism you see surfacing on a large scale, the public is all behind Grass,” said Georg Diez, an author and journalist at the magazine Der Spiegel who has written critically of the poem.

Ze’ev Avrahami, an Israeli journalist and restaurateur in Berlin who has written about the Grass controversy for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said that he had left Israel because he could not support his country’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza. But he said that he and Israeli workers at his restaurant, Sababa, in the chic Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, have found the tone of the discussions disquieting.

“They are not allowed to say anything about Jewish people, and they will never say anything about Jewish people, but to say everything about Israel is O.K.,” Mr. Avrahami said. “It’s absolutely the new anti-Semitism for us.”

(What millions of Germans always believed - namely that Israel is dangerous and Germany shouldn't have a permanent forced solidarity with the "aggression-state" founded in 1948 - is now being openly expressed by more and more people.)